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Vylad Ro’meave was underground.

It was quiet and damp and dark, so much so that he was wholly blind. He was on his back, staring up at nothing. The world seemed like an endless night. He wanted to reach up and touch it, clasp a star in his hands and nurture it, nurse it, but the dark sky was empty. There was nothing to take. Was he sinking? The world felt thick and slow, like the gradual flow of ink seeping over paper. He could hear distant sounds from where he floated, drifting through the bleak, soulless night, muffled. Like footsteps overhead, but they seemed to crunch, like big boots working through crumbling dirt and mud. Like music. Was there music? He wanted to be up there with the people, but not with them, not in the thick of things. He wanted to hide somewhere up high, on a roof or in a tree and listen. He wanted to hear their gleeful chatter, the gossip and the music and the laughter ringing high and innocent through the air. Vylad liked to watch. Ever since he was a kid, he was quietly observing, but that did not necessarily mean he had nothing to say. He hated being a world away from the others. If he could just fight through the blackness – 

Vylad could not struggle. He was thinking about it, trying to focus his brain, but no matter how hard he fought with himself, how he was trying to buck and wriggle and break free of the chains in the night, his body itself refused to budge. 

He couldn’t breathe – but then again, he didn’t need to. His chest did not rise or fall. He did not suffocate. What could he do!? He was still, trapped in the silence. He could not bring himself to writhe. He couldn’t fight it. 

There was no laughter. He couldn’t hear anyone talking. Not this time. Now, he could hear the violins, each stroke of the strings slow and somber and quivering pathetically. There was no melody to dance to. Just a gentle, achingly mournful chain of notes wavering through the night. 

Vylad could feel something twisting around him, something coarse and rough, dragging him down. In jagged spirals beneath him, like blood seeping in trails through water, there was something wrapped around him and spilling from his spine, the tendrils fading into the black. They spilled from his chest and belly, too, rising up into the night. The endless black, the quiet of it all, was disturbed by these brown tendrils. Like the branches of a tree, they split into two, then again and again until there was just a helpless mess of the things jutting out from him and searching for a way out of this darkness that Vylad could not seem to find for himself. No matter how hard he ached to break free and look for an answer, for an escape, he could not. 

And if he could have looked the way he longed to, he probably would have lifted his hand and seen the swell of fungus springing to life right there on his wrist, lively and content to grow in this dead, damp earth. Furthermore, if he had been able to crawl out of there then and there to chase the music that he had loved in his childhood, he not only would have scared plenty of people who thought that Vylad Ro’meave was dead and gone, but he would find a pair of dainty little brown toadstools sat neatly before a gravestone. 

She was trying to figure him out. Aphmau did not seem like the kind of person who could rest without knowing something. He had spent long nights awake alongside her – in which she never would have realised she was being watched at all. She was one of the only people Vylad had ever seen who liked to study. Many many years ago, she liked to stay up late in the library while Levin – only a baby back then – drifted off against her chest. She stayed there until dawn. Sometimes she fell asleep with her cheek squished against her open book. Sometimes she couldn’t rest at all until she had learned something . Anything. Maybe it was because she had been born devoid of it. She had been barely into her twenties but still had to be taught everything all over again (and assuming that she just had amnesia), so Vylad sort of understood that kind of desperation to understand the things she was surrounded by. He never got close enough to know what, exactly, she was reading up on. 

It didn’t really matter.

Back then, Vylad had kept himself busy wondering what Aphmau could have possibly wanted to know about the world. She had taught herself the things that were left for Zianna or Garte to impart upon Vylad, but there were some things that books just could not replicate. People, he thought, were one of those things. People were not so easily captured in the stretch of a sentence or a paragraph or even a chapter in a book, no matter how they were praised and adored throughout it. Even entire books were dedicated to the illusion of Irene’s faith. Still, they could not seem to understand her or the divine. Vylad was left in the dark just as much – but he didn’t allow himself to stray into the safe arms of pretending as if Irene was wholly pure, either. There had to be more than that. 

There was no such thing as entirely pure. Vylad knew that. The Divine had to have known that. Was that why every history book was so determined to paint Lady Irene as the matron who could do no wrong? And why was her blessing so special as to create… her? 

Looking at someone like Aphmau, it was clearer to him than ever that there was no such thing as true innocence . Confused and lonely and incredibly naive, he thought, but not innocent. There was more to her, something underneath her skin, and perhaps just as she found herself desperate to know everything there was to know about the world, Vylad found himself consumed with trying to understand her. Fifteen years had done something to her – had it been that long for her, too? 

She still looked the same. Time had been kind to her. He wondered if it had been kind to Levin, too… that young blonde babe nestled in her arms. There was so much he hadn’t seen thanks to the crumbling, rotting walls of his cell, and so many years lost thanks to the towers of the Nether Fortress itself. 

It was such a human hunger to know, but Aphmau could not grasp why people did bad things. She did not understand the things that people could be driven to do just to survive, how that sort of desperation could drip through a bloodline and seize upon the heart. It had withered Vylad’s family – and now, it took a hold of him, too. He could see it in her eyes when she realised that he was not wholly human, and the blood he must have spilled to become so distant to the mother Irene that he had restored for this world seemed suddenly branded upon the bridge of his nose. It spattered across his face, and he could almost taste that iron sharp and sweet on his tongue. He licked his lips. They were too dry for that kind of imagination.  

Had Zane confused her in that way, too? Had Garroth’s swells of pride and nobility distracted her from the fact that his goodness was just as sullied as his brothers’ was?

Maybe it was a little bit endearing to Vylad, watching her face scrunch up as she tried to figure him out. Despite everything, there was something human about her. There was something mortal and yearning and unknowing, and it was almost nice to see that in those fifteen years, that kind of eagerness had not been stamped out. No one had broken her fully. 

Yet. 

He figured that she was growing frustrated, not with him as a person, but simply the fact that she could not understand him. How could she? Perhaps it was just because he had spent years waiting for her, watching her and her sons and he thought that maybe he knew her better than anyone else but she couldn’t seem to grasp him in return. Not that she could know that he wasn’t exactly a stranger.  

She tried to fit him into a definition that she could understand when he told her. When he said his name, she instantly said, “you’re a Ro’meave?” 

“Not by blood.” 

Not by water, either. His blood reeked of his mother’s treachery in the eyes of O’Khasis, of the people who would never truly forget that he had someone else’s eyes. If Aphmau had heard anything of the bastard child of the city-state, she did not show it, only looking down awkwardly before she tried again. No one ever really knew what to say – but then again, he was not used to this. He had always been branded as a half-Ro’meave before he could really do anything to combat it or hide away from the accusations aimed for his gentle mother. It was obvious that Garte had not bred him, and anyone with half a mind would piece that together without having to ask his parents. Garroth’s gleaming, fluffy blonde hair would always belong to his father, and Zane would always have pieces of his mother tucked away that he refused to show anymore. Things like his freckles, and the lines of his rare smiles. Shameful things. 

But Vylad did not entirely know who he belonged to. He at least had his mother’s eyes, but Aphmau had never met the woman, and she probably would never have known that he was the illegitimate third son unless he told her forthright. Aphmau seemed simple to manipulate. It wasn’t her fault. She was flighty and naive and he knew that while she was trusting, she was also not that stupid, and if he had given any sort of clue that he was dangerous, she would have abandoned him there, not out of any malice but just fear. She was also incredibly curious, and hungry to learn more about him; the mystery of him was alluring. Vylad only had to reinforce it. Vylad knew that he only had one chance to convince Aphmau of his goodness. 

The problem was that he was neither, but she seemed determined to see him in that light anyway. Irene’s chosen one. The one who had guided her to her home. The first person she had seen in this wretched world… she was clinging to that thought, that he was the messenger perfectly designed to coordinate her arrival, but Vylad flinched away from it. He knew that if he told the truth, she would run away. 

So all he offered up was, “my name is Vylad Ro’meave.” 

It was enough. She ran with it, the tidbit feeding her curiosity, but with every following question, he found himself a little bit uncomfortable with the attention. Enough to trust him – too much to save himself from the onslaught of queries. He had not thought this through. 

“I’m not like them, though, not like you’re thinking–” Vylad was stiff, his shoulders climbing for the sky, hunched together. The girl was too close to him. 

“But you’re one of the brothers,” insisted Aphmau, and it seemed to make all the difference to her. She wanted him to be a Ro’meave so badly, and he didn’t understand fully until she added, “Garroth is your brother?” 

Right. Of course, because the thought of being related to Zane was far more despicable to her. She still clung to the idea of Garroth as her faithful guard, her loyal companion. When she closed her eyes and imagined him, he was standing at her side, covered in white and silver and golden armour, his cape billowing in the breeze. Aphmau’s expression twisted up, seeming to struggle with something for a moment. There was something funny in her eyes, an uncomfortable gleam that Vylad had long since familiarised himself with, and when she looked away he refused to ask forthright about it.

“Why are you here alone?” he tried instead.

“Huh?” 

“Alone. Don’t you have guards to accompany you?” He hastened to clarify, “where are they? It’s not safe here; shouldn’t they be following you everywhere…?” Shouldn’t Garroth be here!? 

“I… you’re here alone…”

“I don’t need guards,” he said simply, casting a knowing glance towards his bow (and a more subtle one to the array of knives hidden in his clothes). Vylad was a weapon of his own. Somehow, though, he was a little bit shy to admit that he was a Shadow Knight. 

“How did you know that I need guards…?” Aphmau snapped. She had a bit of bite to her. Maybe she wasn’t quite as naive as he had taken her for. Either that, or those fifteen years had hardened her resolve since he had last seen her. “Have you been spying on me!? ”

“ No! Yes… I – not like that. I… I know your name, because… well, because I was the one who led you to Phoenix Drop, and I was the one who left a baby on your doorstep that day, and I spent a time keeping a diligent eye on your town. So, I suppose, to a degree…” He flushed. It wasn’t supposed to sound so creepy. “And I know that you are a Lord, so you need guards to follow you around. But they’re… not here?”

“I can take care of myself,” she protested meekly. Vylad’s hand brushed over his bow, leaning against the log beside him. He could have put an arrow through her face in a second before she had the time to scream, or transform into his Shadow Knight form and shred her with his claws before she would be able to figure out who he truly was. After a few seconds, she gave up on this act. “I am no longer Lord of Phoenix Drop.” 

“What? You… you stepped down from the position…?” 

She was starting to look uncomfortable with the idea that he already knew her far better than she would ever know him. Vylad couldn’t bring himself to smile anymore, not fully. The most he could manage was turning the corners of his lips subtly upwards, but it always ended up looking a bit mocking. He just kept his lips pursed in a thin line. After a moment, she dodged the question and breathed, “you left Levin, then? It was you…?”

“Yes. Is… is he well?” He just couldn’t help himself, dreading the worst, but thankfully Aphmau bobbed her head. 

“He’s… well, he’s the Lord of Phoenix Drop now.” 

“Ah.” Vylad hummed lightly. “So your guards serve him now?” 

“Only one of them.” 

“Garroth serves Levin?” It was a mistake, he thought, to look so eager, as if he could just follow Aphmau back to Phoenix Drop and hide in the shadows again just to see his brother from a distance instead of hugging him the way he wanted to. 

That funny look in Aphmau’s eyes returned again, and this time it did not leave.

“Vylad,” she said, testing out his name on her tongue like she was trying to taste it, and again he was filled with the undeniable sense that she was trying to analyse him. To categorise him because she couldn’t live with herself not understanding this stranger who somehow knew her too well. “There’s… something you should know…” 

“Hm?” 

“About your brother.” 

“Who are you?” 

“I should be asking you the same thing…!” 

“But I asked first,” insisted Vylad, and he knew he sounded childish the moment he said it. He promptly shut up, clamping down on the questions he had burning on his tongue. He forgot that he was not constant here to everyone. He was not the boy eternally stuck in a cage – he was not Vylad Ro’meave at all. To this stranger, he was just as unfamiliar as the fortress itself, and just as foreboding. Just another threat. Everything about this place begged that stranger to run. He couldn’t even see him. He was on his back against the brick wall, knees to his chest, and through the cracks on the cobbles he could hear the man’s ragged breathing. Vylad’s arms rested on his legs, twining his thumbs together idly because what else was he supposed to do? 

He wasn’t sure if the talking was just his boredom speaking on his behalf or if he was seeking genuine human connection. 

Human…?

How funny. 

Boredom, then, he decided. He was sick of listening to his own breathing. He needed to hear something else, anything else . Gene hardly ever bothered with him anymore, not even for torture. Maybe they had found the answers they sought elsewhere. No matter what, they left him alone, hardly ever even walking past his cell to taunt him the way they used to. Despite that, he was a little bit curious. He had come to accept his fate – that he was doomed to rot in this cell, and whatever happy memories of his childhood remained after the tampering were useless to him anyway. There was a sort of beauty to it, really. After a while, it was not a thought that made him thrash and writhe and yell out for help. It was the stuff of poems. No one listened. It was like fighting a surge of waves, battling the white foam and the onslaught of the tide pulling at him, tugging him further out to see. It was as if Vylad had sat up one day and refused to try and paddle back to shore – there was no one waiting for him on the beach. He just floated idly on the surface watching the sky float by overhead, listening to the sounds of the water.

He repeated himself, calmer this time, “I asked you first.” 

The other man had arrived the other day. Vylad had not yet seen him, and he doubted he ever would. He had a very distinct voice, husky and sort of sultry but snippish, with the kind of honeyed tone that told Vylad he was used to getting his way. Someone had broken that spirit, crushed it under heel. The man kept having to stop to clear his throat, breathing jagged. His voice was cracking as if he was just a boy! 

When, at first, there came no reply, Vylad buried his head in his knees.

Alone in the cell, his memories began to take hold. He remembered the way that Garroth had once hoisted a small, freckled boy up onto his shoulders and raced around the backyard of their estate, whooping until their father caught them. He remembered how that boy, even though he was becoming a teenager and was trying very hard to grow up, still sought comfort from his mother in her lap, arms around her shoulders and nestled against her. How she had stroked his hair until he calmed down. That boy hated the noise of the city. The hustle and bustle of O’Khasis had killed him. He hid away where he could, craving the quiet, the peace of his own mind even though he could have taken control of it all if he had chosen to bear his father’s name without any of his blood. He refused to. 

Now, he would give anything to go back to the noise. 

The quiet was killing him slowly here, taking him apart piece by piece. It was rotting him. 

As a teenager, it was humiliating to feel so sensitive to it all, to still need his mother’s love, but Zianna held him anyway. How the High Priest of O’Khasis had once helped to teach him how to read. They had poured over storybooks together.  

The vines in his cell that draped down the brick walls seemed to grow a little faster in the time that followed. Neither of them had any way to tell how many days had passed up in the Overworld. Like death leeching towards him, roots took hold of his feet and twined across the floor, as if to drag him back to the earth to emerge again out of his grave. They chained him to the floor there, and he refused to move. 

Eventually, the other boy breathed, “are you one of them?” 

Them. Those. 

Vylad grew to despise things like that. Not that he ever blamed the guy for wanting to separate himself from the idea of the wicked ‘Shadow Knight’, the evil, the unforgivable servants of Shad the Destroyer. No one wanted to be like that. Not willingly, anyway. But there was no way to shy away from the truth, and there was no use in pretending as if either of them were human anymore. There was nothing ‘human’ left in them left to cling to. 

“Yes.” 

The other man hated that. 

He would understand one day. Long enough in his own cell, surrounded by the ugly heat and the endless dark bricks, Vylad knew that they would break him, too. Break him to the point where it was impossible to deny why he had been born again in the first place and all he knew was the song of battle and the blood it would spill. It was that kind of peace that allowed Vylad to still look human at least. 

“W–why are you here?” 

“In the Nether?” 

“In a cage.” 

A cage. Vylad had not been thinking of his cell that way at all, as if he was a feral animal that needed to be chained up. As if they thought he’d be clawing at the bars and chasing his tail in here! But he said, “because I have something they want.” Oh, there it was again. He winced at himself. Them. “Because my mortal attachments did not go unnoticed. Why are you here?” 

He didn’t really need an answer. He already knew. 

“My friend,” he finally admitted. “My best friend. I… I had to save her, I couldn’t just – I couldn’t leave her –” 

“Of course,” Vylad allowed.

“I don’t care,” he said fiercely, and there was a fire to his voice, a determination that refused to die even though his body had. “I don’t care, as long as she’s okay. As long as she’s safe.” 

“Do you love her?” asked Vylad quietly. Something about his gritted desperation reminded him of his family, of what they had once done to shelter him. The way Garroth had guided him. The same brother who had sat on the roof of the estate with him once upon a time when he cried. The same brother who taught him music, how to find comfort within it. Vylad had felt love then, the kind that convinced him that he would do anything to keep this family. He would fight for it. 

After a long silence, Laurance breathed, “yes. Yes. I love my Lady Aphmau with all of my heart.” 

Aphmau.

Oh, thought Vylad, and the ache in his heart swelled into a symphony of pain, a pounding so intense that he thought he was dying all over again. He was rotting where he sat. He was sweating and panting, slumped uselessly against that wall. He looked down. Right there, the skin of his feet was melting away, the flesh sagging on the stones. He was burning. He couldn’t even make a sound, just wordlessly staring agape at the grotesqueness of his immortality.  Drops of slick sweat poured down his face. The bones of his mother shifted against the cobbles, fighting against the roots that clung to the floor, the stark whiteness dampened with clusters of moss. The flesh of his family tore right there and gave way to fungus, gleaming with the sweat that dripped from his forehead. His Ro’meave blood seeped into the cracks. The guilt ate him alive. 

“My name is Vylad,” he finally croaked, and now he neglected that part of him, those bones and that flesh, and gave into the heat of the cell. He waited for the boy to say something about the stench now drifting through the bars of his cage, the scent of the woods, sharp and wet. Like rotting wood, like dying animals, like ferns dripping with damp morning dew. But nothing came of the sort at all. 

“I’m Laurance,” said the boy. “Laurance Zvahl.” 

They spent another night at the campfire before they were due to set off in the morning. Vylad was content to sit in silence, sitting a safe distance away from the flames so that the glow of warmth was only gentle and thinking about how he was going to save his brother, but Aphmau wanted to talk. She seemed to get uncomfortable with long silences, and desperately needed to fill it otherwise she’d start to fiddle and pick at the grass around her. Vylad was slowly becoming more and more familiar with her mannerisms up close. After all, it had been a very long time since she had been that girl falling asleep reading with her baby on her chest. 

She said, “y’know, my friend, um, Laurance. He’s a Shadow Knight.” 

Vylad had to be very careful with his facial expressions. “Ah. Mhm.” 

“What? What’s weird about that?” 

“I didn’t say anything was weird at all.” 

“Your face…!” 

“What’s wrong with my face?” he said, and he patted his cheeks softly. He looked a little confused. His expression was calm and neutral, but Aphmau was frowning at him…! 

“I – I’m just saying, y’know, I’m not scared of Shadow Knights or anything. I just thought you should know.” 

“I know,” said Vylad, as if this was obvious. Not only because of her respectable attachment to Laurance, but because after watching Aphmau for so long, he liked to think he had a sense of her morals and her fears. Shadow Knights did not seem to be one of them – even after her experiences with Zenix, Aphmau had no qualms. He thought that was a little bit naive of her, to start trusting any Shadow Knight she stumbled across without a care in the world just because of Laurance, but if he opened his mouth about that she probably wouldn’t change her mind. Vylad could have been a reckless, brash newborn. He could have killed her in a second! He frankly thought that Laurance had lulled her into a false sense of security because his mortal attachments seemed so strong that he would never, ever hurt her. His self-control was impressive. But it was not immortal. “I know that.” 

“Right,” she said, pleased to get this off her chest. “Right. I don’t want you to think I – I think of you any different just because you told me you’re a Shadow Knight. I just wanted you to know. That I’m fully – totally – okay with it –” 

“Okay,” he said. 

In fact, he had even told her to stay calm, and not be frightened of him. Vylad had a good clamp on himself by now, too. She believed that he was safe, but it didn’t feel very good considering he had handed her permission. He thought the subject was over, but she kept pushing. Yes, this thirst for knowledge was becoming a little bit frustrating on his part. What was she playing at!? 

“So y-you and – and Laurance…?” 

“What about us?” 

“Well, you… know… him?” 

“Not really,” said Vylad, and he noticed Aphmau sag in silent relief. “I would recognise his voice. I spent a long time listening to him. Talking to him. I learned… quite a lot. Did he tell you about me?”

He did not know why he felt a little hopeful.

“No,” said Aphmau. “He never mentioned you once… he… he doesn’t really talk about that sort of stuff. The Nether. What happened there, it’s… I know it has to be horrible, but he can’t… he can’t bear to say much of it. I don’t push that kind of stuff. I don’t think I could really handle hearing about it, anyway.” 

“Of course not,” Vylad mused. 

“So you – you spent a lot of time together…?” 

“I’ve never seen Laurance’s face. I would never recognise him from sight alone. But… well, to a degree. I know a lot of things about Laurance. I know about how he grew up, and I know about… well, the life he left behind when he saved you. And I know about you.” 

“Me,” she echoed. In the firelight, he could see her cheeks were flushed pink, and maybe he wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t reached up to squish her own face to try and hide it. “What about me?” She leaned forward curiously. 

“It’s… clear that you… you mean a great deal to Laurance…” 

She glanced away, biting her knuckles to keep back whatever she had been about to say. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yes. A great deal. Well, of course. You had to have known that. He gave up mortality to rescue you.” 

“Don’t say that,” she protested. “Don’t say it was my fault.” 

“Not your fault. Just… he did. His choice. For you. If he didn’t care about you, he never would have given up–”

“Stop it,” she managed. “Stop it, it's not like that.” 

“No?”

“No, I…” Her gaze hardened. “I don’t need anyone to tell me how I ruined Laurance’s life.” 

“It was never your fault…” Vylad said softly. Her eyes gleamed nonetheless, and Vylad knew he had said the wrong thing. Talking had never really been his strong point. “When I spoke to him, you… you meant the world to him. He cares deeply for you. He told me…” He hesitated. “Well, he’s… he was… Aphmau, tell me about your Laurance?” 

They had never shared him. The Laurance who had been trapped in that cell alongside Vylad had been a very different man, and many many years had passed since he heard that voice. He was soft and even poetic at times, but there was a fierceness in him even after he was turned, a spark that refused to die. His determination managed to convince Vylad that maybe there was a way to get out, to get back to their mortal attachments in the Overworld. Vylad, to the remains of his family. Laurance, to his lover. And in that cell, in the heat and the quiet broken only by their voices exchanging secrets because they thought they would never return to such a life, Vylad’s body had succumbed to the bindings of death that chased him into unholy rebirth. He had begun to decay waiting for Laurance’s desperation to culminate into promises. When they did, they were left empty. Vylad kept rotting. Laurance was saved. 

Vylad couldn’t really give into resentment. It was only fair. Laurance was the newborn, and he had never done anything wrong. He despised his new self with all of his heart. He had never done any evil in his life. His sacrifice was noble, his morals rigid. He fought against the monster.  He deserved to be set free. Really, truly, Vylad couldn’t bring himself to blame the man. But for all of those hushed secrets, all of the long hours talking through a wall, Vylad still couldn’t claim to know him at all. 

He was Aphmau’s. 

He let her talk. 

“He’s my best friend,” she said softly, eyes intently on the glow of the fire, still flickering in the night. Vylad shifted to lie down in the grass to listen. “I was scared and alone when I met him. I’d just set foot in Meteli for the first time, and I had no idea of what to do, or where to go, and I just… I was freaking out. But then this… this guard comes up to me and he tells me to stop worrying my pretty little head off, because someone as gorgeous as me didn’t deserve to look so stressed! He’s – well, he’s a horrible casanova and he’s always flirting, but I had no idea about all of that back then – I was so confused that I just stopped. And breathed. I didn’t know what to make of it! I mean, I– for all of my life… or, well, as much of it that I remember, I’ve never been called pretty before . He calmed me down, got me to stop and listen, and he told me where to go, told me about Meteli and how to navigate it. I helped him with politics. Stuff like that, and… I dunno. Ever since then, we stayed close friends. And him being a Shadow Knight was never a problem, not to me. As long as he’s with me, I’m happy. He’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. And he has this long, soft ginger hair but he always ties it back into a ponytail to fight but there’s this one tiny little tuft that’ll never sit still, and it always hangs over his eyes, and I don’t think I can even admit how much I like it because he’d never let me live it down…”

“Your best friend?” Vylad echoed softly, raising his eyebrows. 

“Yeah.” 

Vylad was quiet for a while, mulling this over. “Do you love him, do you think?” 

Aphmau sat up very suddenly. “What kind of a question is that!?” she squeaked. “Wh – why!? Did he say something about me!?” 

“Yes,” Vylad said calmly. “I told you. He thinks you’re wonderful. He would’ve spent a thousand lifetimes in that cell just to know that you were safe.” 

“R–really?” Aphmau breathed hoarsely. 

“I’m not a liar.” 

“I don’t think you are.” 

“That’s what he said, then. That man would do anything for you, I think. That’s why his – his companion came to him. He must have known that, too, that he had to come back to you. You needed Laurance, right?” 

“I always do,” she murmured. 

He tried again. “So do you love him?” 

Aphmau laid down to try and hide her blush, rolling over with her back to him. Her hand met her mouth, and her feet gave a little kick right there in the grass! Vylad clasped his hand over his chest, feeling for a heartbeat. For a moment, he was certain that he had gotten through to her. 

But then she just said firmly, “I love all of my friends.” 

In the months to come, Vylad thought about that for a long time. He thought of Aphmau, and her massive heart that somehow didn’t seem to be able to give up room for Laurance, who had spent hours praising her bravery and her creativity and her kindness in that cell. So much so that Vylad had never had a doubt in his mind that they were bound to be together. He was meant to escape that cell. To go to her. Vylad had nothing to go back to now, and so it had felt like a worthy punishment, to remain there in eternal decay while Laurance left him behind. There was no real obligation to take a stranger with him in the first place. Priorities! Perhaps, if Vylad had been braver, he would have begged for Laurance to take him, too. To bring him back to where the sun shone. 

He was still seething with cowardice. 

He thought of Aphmau’s selflessness, and he thought of the space left in her heart. Did she have more room for another stray? He felt obligated to help her, at least, because that brought him all the more closer to saving Garroth. Having a family again. He caught her thinking about Laurance sometimes, her eyes shining and cheeks pink. 

Still, they danced around each other. Still, Aphmau guarded that tiny corner of her heart reserved for him, even though when he was around she had to struggle to retain composure. 

Through those long weeks, Vylad grew to learn that Aphmau was perhaps more complicated than he had first given her credit for. 

He met Laurance for the first time that Summer, and in the heat, seeing his face for the first time, he could see how Aphmau was so enamoured by him. There was something alluring about him. 

The boy was tall and slender, with fluffy orange curls spilling down his back. He saw the tuft that Aphmau had spoken of when he tied back his hair. He had a sharp face, all cunning and angular. Most interesting of all, though, was the fact that he was a meif’wa, ears pricked up as he walked down the docks. He had a determined gait, as if he couldn’t get places fast enough. He had a dashing smile and charm twinkling in his eye, but when he saw Vylad it vanished like smoke wisping away. His tail fluffed up, ears twisting back. He didn’t know how he could tell. Maybe it was the scent of him, or maybe Laurance had just learned how to recognise Shadow Knights by now. “You’re –” 

“Vylad.” 

“...Vylad?” Laurance looked breathless. 

“... Laurance.” 

Aphmau stood nervously between them, presumably praying they weren’t about to kill each other. There was a long, nervous silence. The tip of Laurance’s tail twitched as he studied the other man, matching his face to the voice that he was probably all too familiar with. 

“It’s… been a while,” Vylad allowed. 

After a beat of hesitation, Laurance said, “I… thought you would still be… well, in the Nether, but from what I’ve heard, things there aren’t exactly… the way I left them.” 

“Indeed,” said Vylad, and while Laurance opened his mouth again to say something else, it died in his throat and he looked at the ground. 

“Look, Vylad,” he managed to get out, “I – I’m sorry – I have to say thank you, for everything you did to help me, to try and fix things in the Nether, everything you did for –” 

“Enough of that,” said Vylad sharply, and he didn’t mean for it to sound so cruel, but Aphmau and Laurance glanced nervously to each other, in the odd sort of way that Vylad later learned to mean that they were exchanging thoughts without having to speak. They knew each other that well – Aphmau depended on him for guidance, and he on her for reassurance. Vylad knew that her presence was keeping the beast under his skin calm, but he had to wonder just how far he would go for her. Was she keeping him on a leash, or loosening it for him? “We have other matters to attend to. Aphmau, I can wait here. Do what needs to be done.” 

Laurance looked a little crestfallen, but he did what Vylad asked. 

He did not seem like a bad person, if not a little bit too emotional for his liking. But he could see why Aphmau liked him. Vylad was wary of the gleam in his eye, that spark that refused to die. It made people desperate. How else could he have resisted the Calling for so long? 

He soon learned why his gut had convinced him to stay alert. Laurance was a fighter, that was true. But everyone had to succumb one way or another. Vylad did not want to hear his human apologies, his sympathies. Vylad had already said his goodbyes and made peace. 

Laurance was so utterly consumed with his Lady Aphmau and protecting the people he loved, that he was wound as tight as a string on a violin. And clutched in the tight, desperate grasp of someone like Aphmau, he was bound to snap eventually. 

When that day finally arrived, Vylad only felt a single chord of sympathy compared to the song of inevitability, the sinking feeling in his stomach that told him it was beginning. The string had finally cleaved in two, and that charm had finally given way to something familiar. This, Vylad thought, was what he knew. These kinds of emotions, at least, he could handle. But mortal bindings? Family? Lovers? Vylad knew nothing of navigating those. It had been too long. Now, those concerns gave way to a Shadow Knight, a fiery and brash beast. He knew how to control himself, how to make his transformations precise and deliberate. Vylad had quelled the urge to kill in himself long ago. He had reconciled with that part of him, the evil part. 

But what of goodness? What of the living? What of the heart that still beat for home? 

Vylad shook the feeling away. 

He swore that he would help Laurance, who was becoming so dangerous that he couldn’t be left unchecked. Aphmau seemed to be looking 

On the beach, he sat on the treeline while Laurance knelt in the sand in the shallows, water and white foam lapping at his feet. You need to remember yourself, he had said, calmly, guiding Laurance in meditation. Breathe. The point of the exercise was to stare at his reflection and think of his humanity. 

“Is – is this how you became so… so calm?” 

“In a way. Everyone has a different… well a different peace of mind.” 

“What’s yours?”

“I…” Vylad did not know why it felt so sacred, but in a rush he really did not want to tell Laurance too much about that. “I had to accept the Shadow Knight part of myself to gain control of it. But… I’m different. I stopped battling that piece of me. I am both human and unhuman, but I can't long for one and then shun the other. I started to accept it, and it gradually accepted me, too. That’s how I’m able to have such a strong hold on my Shadow Knight senses, and how I can stay in this form without too much grief. But then again, I have the sense that you don’t want to be truly like me…” 

Laurance just kept staring at the water. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he mumbled, as if trying to convince himself.

“I know that,” Vylad said gently. “I’ve just made peace with the way I’ve been made, and the new life I have. But the Calling is strong, and you… well, you might not be able to resist it. You’re not like me. It… it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But to become stronger, I had to… well, there’s a part of me I had to embrace, and I don’t think you’re ready to… accept the Nether, either. You want to resist the Calling?” 

“I need to not be like this.” 

“Then you need to cling to your humanity. You need to hold onto it. You can’t let it go. You need to look at that reflection and know… well, know who you’re fighting for. The person you want to be. For yourself. For… those around you…” 

He watched Laurance’s shoulders hunch forward slightly. “I didn’t think you liked being a Shadow Knight.” 

“It’s not about liking it or hating it. It is just who I am. A way of life. A matter of fact. I can’t change myself now.”  

“Then how can I trust you know what to do? How– how do I know you’re not trying to bring me back–” 

“After everything,” Vylad huffed, “I am the last person who wants to put you back in a cell. And I am your best hope of teaching you how to control your temper. ” 

Laurance refused to say much after that, but at least he kept on staring at the gentle shallows obediently. After a while, he muttered, “this is stupid. Stupid Travis, stupid Demon Warlock, stupid me–” 

“Stop that,” said Vylad calmly. “It does no one any good.”

“ This is no use–” 

“You can’t go back to them until you’ve turned back.” 

“I need to know Aphmau is okay–” 

“She is,” said Vylad easily, without even glancing over to her. “She’s okay.” 

Laurance kicked at the sand and grumbled underneath his breath, but he seemed to respect Vylad enough to keep his eyes on the water. He was making an effort to breathe deeply; Vylad could hear him.  

“I don’t want to do this,” Laurance mumbled. “I want to – rip his fuckin’ – head off –” 

He said, “Laurance, do you still love her?” 

“Eh!?” 

“Aphmau. Are you still in love with her?” 

Laurance only allowed himself a beat of hesitation. “ Yes . Of course. Yes. How could I not be? Something like this, it… it’s not going to go away. It’s never going to go away. I… I’m so in love with her that… when we’re apart it feels like half of me is missing. Like someone’s reached into my lungs and tore one half out and I can’t breathe when I can’t be with her, and I can never be with her, because I’m like this. Every damn day. I – sometimes I trick myself into thinking that she’s just as crazy about me when I know she couldn’t be, but… but it wouldn’t matter even if she didn’t. I’m still her best friend, I’d still do anything for her. I don’t care. I just have to be there for her. I have to. I could suffocate and die and never breathe again as long as she’s okay. I never knew what that felt like before, to want to die for someone… I never realised it was a feeling I was capable of until I met her and it was like Irene put this… this pearl in front of me, this precious gem, and it was like she looked at me and said, you are meant to hold her. Protect her. Love her. She was meant for me. We were meant to meet. I – I wasn’t even religious. I’m still not. But I look at her sometimes, and I… I’m just a little bit closer to faith.” 

“Hey, Laurance?” 

Laurance’s eyes fluttered open, and he was himself again. He gaped at the water, then turned around to stare at Vylad. “How – how did you –” 

“I just know,” said Vylad, and he thought maybe there was hope for him. He leaned back into the grass a little, and where his fingertips curled into the grass, toadstools sprung up to meet them. He allowed himself a soft, wry smile. 

Vylad was the farthest from faith that he had ever been. 

On his first day in the sunshine, back above ground, he allowed himself to be selfish. He went back to O’Khasis. 

He didn’t stay in the city long. There was nothing left for him there – or so he convinced himself, to spare himself the heartache of finding out that his parents were gone and his siblings lost. He wandered the rooftops for a while and watched the people passing by below his feet, his scarf billowing in the wind. He reached up to adjust it. He was on his way to the estate, taking the familiar route that he had walked dozens of times over as a teenager, loping over the rooftops. Garroth used to cuff him over the head for it, but then his hands would naturally move to ruffling playfully at his curls and the scolding would turn light with amusement. He never really got into trouble with his older brother, even though Garroth noticed plenty of Vylad’s mischief out of sight in O’Khasis and probably could have ran to their father if he really wanted to. He’d lightly tell him off, then give up halfway through and just resort to enveloping his little brother in a hug. Garroth liked to wrestle and play out of sight of their parents, and Vylad liked to hide away from the noise of the city, so dangerous high places were perfect for the two of them. They liked to climb. Garroth fell out of a tree and broke his wrist once. 

He knew that Garroth would be in Phoenix Drop, and Zane… 

Zane would be here. Garte would be here. Would his mama be here? Would she hold him in her lap again and let him rest, finally, against her chest? He slowed down suddenly, fingertips clutching at the swell of his scarf, wrapped thick and secure around his neck. She had made it for him when he was just a toddler, knitted it with her bare hands when he was just a baby. She spent long days in the armchair in front of the fire working on it. He did not remember being given it for the first time, but he knew that it had been too big for him at the time. It was massive! She liked to tell him later that he would beg to be wrapped up in it like a blanket, and it would drape along the floor when he raced around with it on. He would hide away in it and only his round green eyes and a stray brown curl would be visible. And when he grew into it, he would refuse to take it off so adamantly that mama would have to bribe him just to wash it! 

Vylad ran his fingers over its softness, feeling at the loose, fraying strands. One day, it was going to fall apart. He had clung to his mother’s scarf through hell and back, he had wrapped himself up in it when he was shaking in that cell not knowing if he would ever come back to this world again. He was only a couple of streets away from the estate. He could even see the peak of its rooftop in the distance. 

But at his feet, the roof tiles cracked to give way for patches of toadstools to spring up where he stood. Grass clustered at his boots. Roots peaked over the cusp of the roof, making the slow crawl for him. 

He ran. 

He ran away from the estate and what was left of his family. He bolted until he found a safe place to slip from the roof, clattering down a fire escape and slipping down alleyways until he was at the borders of O’Khasis. He left it all behind; still, he kept running until he was damp with sweat and grime and he felt dirty all over, felt covered with dirt, felt it clinging to him – 

Mother of Irene, help me! 

But no one came. 

Alone in the woods on the outskirts, Vylad paced around until he found what he was looking for. Selflessly, desperately, he had wanted his family. He had ached for them. But cowardly, he could only bring himself to run, and his feet steered him towards the truth. 

The horrible, despicable truth. 

Vylad stumbled into the overrun graveyard and found himself lost. On the outer edges, the gravestones still stood sturdy in neat rows in amongst bush cover, like soldiers perched on the hill nestled in fluffy green blankets, but as he stumbled down it he found the inner circles overgrown with the heart of the woods. This place belonged to the forest now. In those long, long years of waiting in the Nether, it had succumbed to the wild, and no matter how hard Vylad searched, he thought that the evidence that he had even died at all was nowhere in sight. 

In the middle of the graveyard, a giant gnarled tree had taken root. It was the biggest that Vylad had ever seen, and the cluster of trees that seemed to mimic a miniature woodland in the cemetery all fed off of its energy. Huge, twisted roots were seeping into the earth like veins, and he could almost imagine them in a network beneath the earth, writhing around like worms. The dirt was damp; it smelled wet here, like the peace after a warm summer’s rain. The wood was soggy and old, strips of bark peeling away. Fungus had taken hold of the trunk, coating it with swells of cream and grey that jutted out of it like bone. At the foot of it, happily thriving in the earth, were clusters of toadstools. Vylad tentatively approached, climbing deeper into the arms of the woodland and hoisting himself up to balance on one of the larger roots.

And there it was. Right there, nestled between the safe arms of the roots and the foliage, peeked a grey stone. 

Vylad Ro’meave. 

He knelt there, in the toadstools and the roots. Who was he, to claim that these bones had ever belonged to his mother, that he had ever been worthy to share her blood, this Ro’meave blood? Who was he to dare to try and deny it, to try and shy away from everything that made him hers? His mother’s son through and through – and who would be able to tell, now? If he dragged his claws into the earth here and now and dug up his own remains, they would never have the luxury of seeing his freckles and his curls and his mother’s precious green eyes. No one would have the nerve to call his bones illegitimate, and no one would be able to deny them the right to become an heir just as his brothers could have been.

No one could call his remains a monster. 

Vylad sat in the dark shelter of the tree and felt it. There was something here. A heart still slowly beating in the dirt, waiting for him. 

There was a part of him still under there. There was a part of him that would always lay here in O’Khasis – and no matter what new body had been made for him in the Nether, this new vessel would never be able to shake the bindings of the grave. It would follow him everywhere. There would always be some part of him that was damp and decaying and would give way to the toadstools inevitably, because there was no choosing between good and evil, Shadow Knight and human, unfeeling and tender. Vylad wanted to feel it. He wanted to shelter the wounds of his past. He ached to lick them and soothe them rather than tearing out the stitches. He pressed his forehead to the trunk of the tree, sagging against it. He let himself be the boy in the grave. 

Just for a little while, he let the wild grow around him. 

And just as the wild took a hold of his grave, of his decaying body rotting under the earth to fuel the earth, bound to the titan tree, it took his new form too. It clung to his spirit. And months, years, into the future, he would sit quietly with the mushrooms and the roots and yearn to be underground again – as a Shadow Knight, his armour would be covered with fungus and leaves and roots, each flush of life a reminder of the memories that waited for him when he was human again. The way mama kissed his forehead. The way Garroth held his hand all the way to the medic, even with a broken wrist, just to comfort his little brother! The way that Garte clapped him on the shoulder and called him his son as if there had never been any doubt in the matter at all; the way that Zane put on different voices for all of his favourite characters when he read to Vylad. All of it, all of the love that he had died with, he found it all again and sheltered it. He gave it a place to sleep. 

He happily, gratefully fed the worms.